


Erised Mistaken

by vyrenrolar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Hogwarts First Year, neville longbottom is very important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8055289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyrenrolar/pseuds/vyrenrolar
Summary: Neville Longbottom goes for a walk. Neville Longbottom gets lost. Neville Longbottom meets a Mirror.





	Erised Mistaken

**Author's Note:**

> In which Neville Longbottom meets the Mirror of Erised, and the Mirror of Erised makes the third mistake of its career.

Neville Longbottom was taking a walk.

Neville Longbottom was trying to familiarize himself with the twisting, turning, topsy turvy passages of his new school. If he failed in that effort, he could at least make friends with some interesting portraits. After all, he was very good at making friends with things that weren’t people. Plants, portraits, potting benches… He wasn’t sure if Professor Sprout knew that one of her benches was sentient, but he figured it wasn’t his secret to tell her, so he left well enough alone.

Neville Longbottom was a tad bit lost. Again.

Neville Longbottom approached a painting of Stonehenge, druids dancing through the leaning sandstone sarsens. “Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if any of you could give me directions, maybe?” His pitch rose, and his voice squeaked a little as it always seemed to do when he spoke to someone new. He supposed he’d have to get that under control at some point. One of the druids broke away from the group and came up to bottom edge of the frame.  _ Where do you wish to go?  _ it seemed to ask. “I was just wandering, and I should probably be getting off to bed…” The druid conveyed, through gestures and a couple of bodily convulsions, that the boy should head down the corridor, take a right, go back through the door, spin around three times, and climb the stairs on the opposite wall. The young wizard thanked the painted druid and turned to go.

Neville Longbottom was confused. Was he supposed to turn three times? Or was it four… He walked through the door again, thinking to retrace his steps, and found himself in a large and dusty unused classroom. There were desks piled against the wall by the door, chairs thrown in a heap in the corner, and at the far end of the room, a mirror.

As Neville Longbottom walked slowly towards the ornate wooden (or was it metal?) frame, he took a moment to be alone with his thoughts. His gran had told him to do so often, and he figured now was as good a time as any.

Neville Longbottom thought about his mother. His sweet, sweet mother who gave him bottlecaps and gum wrappers and somehow, every time, made sure he knew how much she loved him. He thought of his father, and how the nurses said the only times he ever smiled were when he was looking at his wife or his son. He wondered, as he did frequently, what they would have been like if  _ It _ hadn’t happened to them. He wondered if he was doing well enough in school, if his grades would have made his parents happy, or proud. He wondered, too, what Harry’s parents would be like, if they had lived. He wondered if there was a way they could have. He wondered if Harry would be a different kind of brave if he had known his father, or a different kind of beautiful if his mother had been there to comb his hair. He wondered if Harry wondered about him, if Harry knew about Neville’s parents.

Neville Longbottom looked at his reflection. Neville Longbottom’s reflection looked back at him. He cocked his head to one side, trying to figure out what was different. Because there was almost certainly something different. The cogs at the back of his mind kept whirring, spitting out what ifs and scenarios where his parents had died and Harry’s had lived, and thinking maybe it would be all right, then. Maybe Harry would have grown up loved, with friends, and maybe Neville really wouldn’t be all that different. He’d still have his Gran, and Professor Sprout, and the trees and the potting bench. He thought all these things without even realizing, staring so intently as he was at the face of the boy in the mirror. He pressed his hand to the glass and squinted his eyes.

Neville Longbottom saw it, then. He traced the thin white lines on the other side of the glass with his finger, as though he were trying to memorize the shape. It looked much the same as Harry’s lightning bolt, a little finer in places, perhaps, but similar enough that he knew what it was. He stepped back, pondering.

Neville Longbottom let his eyes travel over the mirror’s frame. The lettering at the top caught his eye. He squinted, remembering the word puzzles with Uncle Algie, and started to move the bits and pieces around in his head. He reached up to touch the word at the far right, then chuckled to himself. It wasn’t an anagram, it was just backwards! Pleased with himself (there were only so many things he was good at, after all) he read the engraved words.

Neville Longbottom laughed out loud. He smiled at the mirror and patted its side, telling it it had been a good try, and to keep at it. The image in the mirror warped and faded, leaving nothing but a metallic sheen where once had appeared an entire room. Neville shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked out the door. He climbed the staircase on the opposite wall, and went through the curtain at the top to find himself a few feet away from the Fat Lady of Gryffindor. She was up, of course, talking to a merman across the way about wine glasses. She broke off mid sentence to smile at the sleepy first year. Knowing he was one of hers, she opened without another word, tut tutting as the child muttered his thanks.

In an unused classroom at the end of a corridor that is only there on Thursdays, there sat a not quite ancient mirror. It was quite upset with itself. You see, dear reader, its perfect record had been tarnished, once again, by a child. It had only made this mistake twice before, and only ever with children. The last one had later pulled a sword from a stone, and the one before that had found her way to Atlantis. 

The mirror settled itself none too comfortably into its frame, supposing that it could not be helped. It could at least comfort itself with the knowledge (such as a mirror can have) that the magic involved was not at fault. It was just that, every so often, a child would come along with the ability to yearn so powerfully for any one thing at any given time, that they could stitch the universe into a new shape if they wished. A child like that, born only once every five hundred years or so, could change the entire world in the blink of an eye. When a child like that felt, no matter what they felt, they did so with everything they had and everything they were. And so, when a magic mirror in an empty hall was confronted with such a child, it merely showed them what they wanted in that given moment. This child had wanted to ease the burdens of another, a noble goal indeed. But his heart’s desire, ah, that had yet to be determined. He would do great things, though. Of that, the mirror was certain.


End file.
